W.H. Auden Quotes

Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.

But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue

How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.

We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.

In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.

To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.

To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.

What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.

Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.

A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.

The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.

Now is the age of anxiety.

Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.

It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.

Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life

In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.

If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

We are all here on earth to help others.

The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.

The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.

What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.

Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.

Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.

I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.

The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.

All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.

I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.

Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.

a culture is no better than its woods